Seychelles gets third telecoms operator

South African-based Intelvision yesterday launched as the Seychelles’ third telecoms operator, offering fixed telephony and internet access services. The firm, which already provides the islands’ only cable TV service, said its call tariffs and rental fees are much lower than the country’s other two telcos, British-owned Cable and Wireless (C&W) and Airtel Seychelles, owned by India’s Bharti. Intelvision’s monthly rental charge is SCR50 (USD9.3) compared with SCR72 (USD13.4) for C&W’s fixed users, whilst its local call rate is SCR0.5 per minute compared with Airtel’s SCR0.7 and C&W’s SCR0.82. Local calls to mobile phones are charged at SCR1 (USD0.19) per minute, compared with C&W’s SCR2 and Airtel’s SCR2.6 per minute. International calls are SCR3.9 per minute, lower than its two competitors’ SCR6.75 per minute. The South African operator has deployed a hybrid of fibre-optic cable and coaxial cable, which it says is faster than the narrow band satellite links offered by the other two companies. There are currently around 21,000 fixed line connections in the 120-island archipelago of 90,000 people, with around 60,000 mobile subscribers split almost equally between C&W and Airtel.